Lies: A Journal of Materialist Feminism - Libcom

airy room is not for us, the immigrants, the lower hands, to plan for
or share with the residents. Ours is a labor confined to the bathroom,
to the involuntary, lower functions of the body. Rather than people
of color in uniformed scrubs, nice white ladies with pretty clothes
are paid more to care for the leisurely activities of the old white
people. The monotony and stress of our tasks are ours to bear alone.
Yet despite this alienation, residents and workers alike struggle to interact
as human beings. Not perfectly, not always correctly, not easily.
In the absence of emotional and mental support for both residents
and caregivers, under the conditions of institutionalized ableism
that count the lives of people with disabilities as worthless, under
the abject conditions of overwork, racism, and underpayment, “caregiver
stress” sometimes overrides morality and ethics and becomes
a tragic reason, or lousy excuse, for mistreatment. These imperfect
moments are swept under the rug, the guilty institutions absolved of
them through paltry fines and slaps on the wrists. Meanwhile, these
trespasses become yet another form of “evidence” for why poor immigrant
women who clean bedpans and change diapers cannot be
trusted and need heavy managerial control.
The nursing home bosses freeze carefully selected, picture perfect
moments in time, brandishing them on the front pages of brochures
that advertise facilities where “life is appreciated,” where “we care
for the dignity of the human person.” In reality, they have not tried
to make that possible. Under poor conditions, we have improvised to
allow genuine human connection to exist. How we do that is something
the bosses have no idea about. They sit, calculating in their
cold shiny hallways, far from the cacophony of human interaction
that they know only to distantly publicize and profit from.
~
We CNAs also run on stolen time. It is the only way that the work
gets done. When I first started my job, fresh out of the training institute,
I was intimidated by the amount of work I had to do. The biggest
challenge was the level of detail and thoroughness that each task
CARING: A LABOR OF STOLEN TIME 73